The other verifier brought up a good point about the planning in the run, I unfortunately am going to have to give this a reject

P.S. I seriously thought the two guys you plays as from the start were Frank West and the other guy from the original Dead Rising. That would have been freaking amazing

Quote from Vulajin:

A/V quality: excellent.Cheating: none.

It's difficult to verify a game like this, because as the runner's own comments point out, there's only so much you can do to speed up a rail typer. The runner gives several valid strategies for doing so: disregarding accuracy, "damage boosting," and not using the slow time powerups. However, these points belie the fact that absolutely the most effective strategy to save time in this game is to type quickly and accurately.

To gauge the runner's typing speed, I opened a Notepad window and attempted to type the phrases from the first four stages of the run while watching it. (I did this the first time I watched the video, so that I did not have any advance knowledge of what phrases would appear.) The runner's reaction times are approximately on par with mine, or sometimes better. However, I found that I was consistently typing words a fair bit faster than the runner. Given that my top typing speed is around 120 wpm, I'd guess the runner is around 80-90.

Where the runner lacks in raw typing speed, s/he excels at accurate keystrokes. For many typists, just pausing for a fraction of a second can save several seconds of potential typos. (I am frequently afflicted with this issue, as I saw in my test.) The runner utilizes this technique to avoid costly mistakes throughout the first seven stages of the run. In stages 8 and 9, the runner falls off the wagon a little bit, but that can be expected due to fatigue.

I found two major deficiencies with this run. First, I noted that the runner, despite frequent comments about being concerned about health, never picked up any of the health powerups. Even on MFer difficulty, these are found all over every level, and easily would have alleviated all concerns regarding health. Consuming a health powerup does not cost any time, so there's no reason not to do so.

Secondly, I noted that several civilian rescues led to lengthy cutscenes, wasting precious time. Particularly, in stage 8 (Jailhouse Judgment), a civilian is found in the visiting area. Saving her leads to an extended dialogue exchange between G and Washington. I attempted to speedrun this stage one time, allowing as many civilians as possible to be killed. The resulting time was about 37 seconds faster than the runner's time for this stage. (Disclaimer: I was fully rested when attempting this.)

Conclusion: weak reject. This is a decent run of a game that won't likely see too many offerings, but I can't say that it definitely meets SDA play quality standards.

Recommendations: At the very least, I think the runner really needs to analyze civilian events more closely. Even without typing faster, there should be enough civilians to sacrifice to save a bunch of time.

This one took a looooong time to come back and I had a feeling you guys weren't sure what to do with it. Thanks to the verifiers who spent the time to verify this one, it's a long one to have to sit through and I appreciate the investiture.

Speed

My WPM, especially towards the end of the run - does trail off a bit. To be honest, it started lower than it should have too. This ended up being recorded at the end of a 7 hour Typing of the Dead: Overkill session and it turned out I was having pain using the keyboard at work for about a week and a half after the weekend I recorded it. Quite frankly, trying to redo this over and over again puts me at legitimate risk for some kind of repetitive stress injury- and I'm not really interested in pushing it like that again.

When I'm not totally effing overdoing it - I do promise you that my WPM is very high.Here's the link if you guys want to try it out.(Vulajin, I'd be curious to see how you do on this. If you can get over 120 maybe you should consider running the game as well. )

But there's a difference between what I can do and what I did do in this run. I was tired when I started and waaay more tired by the time I finished.

Routing

While I was waiting for this to come through verification, I had some time to dwell on the things wrong with it. Quite frankly - this is the reason I figured it may be rejected. I did my most thorough testing with the initial survivors... the ones that you have all day to save and that waste too much time to let the mutant slog over there and kill them. The jailhouse judgment lady in particular really urked me... but given the length of the run I was rather expecting that the time difference would be trivial. I have to agree with you that 37 seconds in an on-rails game is a huge deal.

I was hoping that this would be accepted of course, but I don't really fault you guys or feel upset by this decision - and again I appreciate everyone's time.

The Proposal

I want to come back at this, but I want to do it in a different way. For a number of reasons mentioned above, I don't really want to do this as a Single Segment anymore. Too much RNG, and quite frankly too much RSI.

Before I put the time into the new plan, I'd like a greenlight from someone at SDA who can speak for it. I would like to redo this as a segmented run. Doing it segmented will allow me to have the following:

1. Better WPM (taking this one stage at a time will mean that I can attack every level at my best)2. Better RNG (It will be much more reasonable to rub out really bad RNG and unfortunate phrases - resetting a 10 minute level instead of a 2 hour run)3. Better Routing (I really want to dive in and figure out who to save and who to let die on a per survivor basis, which is clearly required for the optimum run)

Overall I think I could knock significant minutes off of this run by doing it segmented. I am inclined to redo the entire thing with each level as a segment if this would be acceptable. Leave single segment to someone with iron tendons.

I took that speed test, and came up with 130, so we're basically about the same level. (It's not often I get to say that!) I actually didn't really hold the typing speed against you, as even if that were your max typing speed, 80-90 over the course of an entire run is perfectly acceptable, particularly given your high accuracy.

The idea of a doing ILs for this game occurred to me while verifying this, and although I'm not in a position of authority, I think it's safe to say it would be an appropriate approach for this game. Even in a single segment run, all you do is select the levels in order from the main menu, and there is no carry-over of status from level to level. As such, I think it would be most appropriate to construct an IL table for this game.

As such, I think it would be most appropriate to construct an IL table for this game.

I agree with this. Segmented and IL wouldn't really have any difference due to the way the game works, only IL would at least allow some competition to bloom if anybody fancied challenging it. IL makes a lot of sense for this game.

Thanks guys. I'll come back around at this with some IL submissions as soon as time allows. I think I'll really be able to produce impressive results if I don't have to do it as a single segment.

Vulajin, once the IL table goes up you should seriously consider competing with me. This game needs more attention, and if you're as wicked fast as you seem to be you might be able to get some records.

I might be up for some IL attempts on this game, but I have so many projects in the pipe at the moment that I'm not sure how long it'll be before I find time for that. Still, I won't rule anything out.

Just FYI, I'm coming back at this as ILs. I started recording tonight and got the first level done. Slashed another 10 seconds off of what I felt was already a very strong first level. If I can optimize survivors and implement Vulajin's suggestions, I think I can overall shave at least 90 seconds from the run time and produce something that everyone will like.